Phase

We’d been working on salvaging a defunct Starfleet research station for about two weeks. The work was slow-going; we had to work closely with a Starfleet salvage team, who was offloading some of the station’s still-usable scientific equipment, and make sure not to rupture anything crucial. “Subtlety” not being Captain Ryan’s strongest suit, he’d taken to spending a lot of time in his cabin on the lower hull.

First Officer Smith Stevenson and I had been taking turns carving off pieces of the station using our salvage bay’s forward phaser array, and then packing the raw material into our salvage bay. We were close to full-up. I figured that we had a day, maybe two, on-site before we’d have to head to Starbase 47 to offload the salvaged material for recycling.

I’d been on-shift for a solid ten hours and was getting tired. Normally, Shandra would have already been on the bridge for handoff and her own ten-hour shift, but she appeared to be running late. Odd for her, really. I toggled her comm, but didn’t get a response. Odder. I toggled Adam’s comm. “Hey Adam, seen Shandra?”

There was a long enough pause that I grew concerned. Then, “Um, let me come up there.”

Ooooo-kay. Odder yet. I tractored my last piece of station hull into the salvage bay, and tucked it into the tractor/pressor net that held everything in place. I stowed the forward phasers just as Adam came onto the bridge. We’d picked up him a few months back as part of a Starfleet-directed rescue operation, and after somewhat hurriedly marrying our First Officer, he’d signed on to the crew. He was nominally a medic, although he’d originally studied engineering, meaning he helped fill two roles on board. We’d sort of made off with the standalone medical module that Starfleet had, er, “loaned” us for that rescue mission. Instead of keeping it in the salvage bay, though, where it just took up precious space, Captain Ryan and I had attached it to the Troll’s port-side hull, tucked in just aft of the salvage bay door hinge and just under the leading edge of the port warp nacelle. It looked, frankly, ridiculous, but it generated its own gravity so having it welded on “sideways” didn’t effect its usefulness.

Adam was out of uniform. That was fine, since our uniforms were only colored coveralls in the first place, and since as far as I was aware he didn’t have anything official to be doing right now. Except “out of uniform” in this case meant a slightly worse-for-wear t-shirt half-tucked into a pair of pants that had obviously been thrown on somewhat hastily. He was barefoot, too. “Soooo….” I said. “What’s up with Shan?”

“She’s, uh… we’ve… she’s going to need some time off,” he said. He was panting slightly.

“Off?” I said. Our First Officer almost never took time off.

“Yeah. She may need, like, a few weeks. But I–”

“Wait,” I interrupted. “A few weeks? What in the world is wrong?”

“Nothing, nothing,” he said. “Everything’s perfectly normal. She’s just going through a… well, a phase, basically, and I need to keep an eye on her. It’s all good, she’s fine, but she can’t report for duty right now.”

“I mean, we can finish up here in a few days without her,” I said, doing some calculations in my head. “I need to let the Captain know to go see her.”

“No! No, no, no,” he said, waving his hands emphatically. “He can’t see her! No, like I said, it’s just a… it’s just a phase. Maybe just a week or two. We can stay in our cabin,” he added, backing off the bridge. “I’ll keep you posted!” He closed the bridge hatch.

I was still staring, somewhat dumbstruck, at the hatch. Without looking, I reached behind me and toggled Ryan’s comm. “Captain,” I said, “something’s weird with Shandra. Can you come up to the bridge?”

There was a slight delay before, “um, no. No, not right now. How’s the salvage going?”

The salvage? “The salvage is fine,” I said slowly, “but Shandra won’t come out of her cabin and now you won’t come out of your cabin? Should I be worried?”

“No, it’s fine, I’m sure she’s fine. Did Adam say she’s fine?”

“Adam said it’s a phase.”

There was another pause. “She’s fine. They’re fine, I’m fine, everything’s fine. Keep salvaging. Don’t forget to take a break.”

I will admit that I’m not the most empathic person aboard the ship. I turned back to my console and finished shutting down the salvage operation, and messaged the Starfleet crew that I’d be back in ten hours. Being not-so-emphathic means I sometimes don’t fully “read” what my crewmates are going through, and that I’m terrible at reading through the–

Empathic.

I toggled Adam’s comm again. “Hey, Adam, just a quick quest–”

“NOT NOW!” he screamed. “WE’RE FINE!” And the comm cut off.

I thought hard for a few moments. I called up our onboard ship registry, which had pretty up-to-date information on most of Starfleet’s ships, and flipped to the entry for USS Powhatan. I read a bit about her Captain, who happened to be our First Officer’s mother. Empathy. Empathy.

Troll didn’t have a very comprehensive medical database. The information we had was pretty limited to first-aid type stuff, dealing with traumatic injuries, that kind of thing. Our own tiny medical bay was basically an autodoc. But we had a shiny new Starfleet portable medical unit bolted to the side of the ship. I put the Troll’s helm on stationkeeping and made my way into the medical unit.

It had a much more comprehensive medical database, and I spent a good bit of time poking around in its entries on various Federation species.

Empathy. Phases.

“Adam,” I said, toggling his comm again, “do you guys need me to bring you any–”

“NO, NO!” he shouted again. The audio sounded a bit hollow, as if he was shouting at his comm from across the room instead of wearing it. And he sounded out of breath. “WE’RE FINE, THANK YOU, NO NEED TO BRING ANYTHING!”

I shut down the medical unit’s computer, and climbed back into the Troll. I made my way to the lower deck, which is where our crew quarters were. After what I’d read, and what I suspected, I wasn’t going to even go near Shandra and Adam’s quarters. Instead, I hit the chime on the Captain’s quarters, which sat dead in the middle of the crew section and was the only way to access the little skiff docked to our bottom hull. Ryan opened the door. He stood dead in the doorway, body language making it clear he didn’t want me coming in. He had the lights down low. I was used to that, but this time we didn’t have one of his Space Bunnies aboard. “I’ve a concern about the First Officer,” I said, peering over his shoulder into his cabin. “But… what is that on the floor?”

“Nothing,” he said. “What’s wrong with Shandra?”

I pushed past him and stood in the entrance of his cabin. He’d unbolted his bunk and desk and pushed them against the wall, leaving about a 10-meter by 10-meter area of clear space. It was covered with…

“Is that a model of a Constitution-class starship’s bridge made out of cereal boxes?” I asked.

He pushed me back into the passageway. “Maybe. Maybe not. It’s hard to get accurate blueprints. What’s wrong with Shandra? Do I need to check on her?”

“Well,” I said slowly, “not per se. And if everything I’ve read is correct there’s a good chance you shouldn’t. But you might want to check on Adam.”

“Why?” he said. “What’s wrong with Adam?”

“He’s with Shandra.”

“Yeah, they’re married.”

“He’s only human.”

“Yeah, so are we all, so what?”

“Well,” I said, even more slowly, “that’s kind of the thing. Shandra isn’t as entirely human as, say, you or Adam.”

“I really need you to get to the point,” he said sharply.

“It’s just that she’s pushing fifty, and I don’t know if you know this or not, but her Mom is Betazed, and–oh, you get it,” I said with some relief, watching the blood drain out of his phase. Er, his face.

“Is Adam okay?” he hissed.

“He just seemed tired but they’re only a day into it,” I said.

“My God.”

“I was concerned, but I don’t know what to do.”

“I think these thing just have to play out,” he said. “It’s like Vulcans, kind of. We should have plenty of food on board,” he said.

“I checked the computer in the medical unit and it said anywhere from a week to three.”

“And we’ve been here for two already,” he muttered. “Okay. Look, I’ll go up and take a shift and try to finish up. I’ll–stop looking at me like that, I’ll just carve and leave everything in place, you can stow it. Jeez, you’re so anal retentive. Next shift, drag it all in and we’ll get out of here.” He stepped out of his cabin. “Once we’re at Starba–do not go into my cabin!!” he barked, closing the door behind him. “Once we’re at Starbase 40-whatever, we can figure out if there’s anything else we need to do. They’ve a nice recreational sector, maybe we can get the two of them a nice suite with room service.”

“Okay,” I said, following him to the bridge.

“No, you go catch some sleep,” he said. “You need to be fresh in eight or nine hours.”

“Well, I just wanted to understand–”

“I am absolutely not having this talk with you if your parents or whatever did not do so. Go to the medical unit and look it up.” I turned back toward the access hatch we’d made for the unit. “Later,” he said. “Sleep now. Go.” He pushed me in the direction of my cabin.

I’m fortunate in that I can fall asleep more or less at will. I got a solid eight hours, and then made my way to the bridge. I absolutely did not hear banging noises coming from Adam and Shandra’s cabin, nor the immense mess in the small galley that was clearly the result of several hurriedly-prepared meals. “How’re we doing?” I asked Ryan.

He turned from his seat at the main console. “I do not know how you two do these for hours on end,” he said, red-eyed and clearly tired. “I’m going back to my cabin. Drag this stuff in and get us on to Starplace whatever, would you?”

“Yessir,” I said. He sketched a tired salute and left the bridge, and I sat at the main console. He’d done really well: all the salvage he could possibly fit was carved off and stacked up, representing probably a half of the station’s mass. I let the Starfleet crew know we’d be back in a few days for the rest, wondering to myself if the Stevensons would be with us or not. It took about five hours to load the salvage and close the bay. I was just plotting the course to Starbase 47 when Adam lurched onto the bridge. He didn’t look good. He’d forgone a shirt at all, and there were clear bruises across his torso. No blood, though.

“I need to ask you a favor,” he said, his voice ragged.

“We’ll be on our way to Starbase 47 in a few minutes,” I said. “It’ll take about 20 hours to get there at maximum warp, which I’ll absolutely be programming us for. En route, I’ll reserve you two a suite at the station’s nicest resort hotel. They have room service. Would you like me to notify medical personnel?”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah, I could use a quick checkup. And, um, when we get underway, could you go into the med unit for me? Storage locker C should have racks of syringes. I need a pack of the green ones and a pack of the red ones. You’re not color-blind, are you?”

“No, I can do that. Do you want me to–”

“Just put them on the floor outside our cabin door, please. Don’t knock. Say, 20 minutes?”

“Make it 10,” I said, engaging the warp drive. “I’ll go right now.”

He nodded again, took a deep breath, and turned to make his way back to the crew quarters. I followed, veering toward the medical unit. “Hey Adam,” I called before he rounded the corner.

“Yeah?” he asked tiredly.

“You’ll make it,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Once in a lifetime opportunity!” He rounded the corner and I continued on to the med unit.